Bright winter sunlight flooded the non-descript conference room in the Palais des Nations, as delegates of the UN Group of Governmental Experts (GGE) on cyber took their seats. It was February 2020, and the 2-year multilateral process was still in its early days, with negotiations scheduled over the course of the next 18 months. While delegations did not…

Although we may not like to be reminded of it, international lawyers start out as domestic lawyers. When being admitted to practice in a particular jurisdiction, we are taught that lawyers owe duties not only to clients, but also to domestic courts and the interests of justice (‘institutional duties’). These institutional duties are hierarchically superior: faced with a…